


The Way It Ends

by bobbiejelly



Series: Guess Who's Crushing on Addison Montgomery? [41]
Category: Grey's Anatomy, Private Practice
Genre: Angst, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/F, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, MerAdd, Realization, Self-Discovery, meddison
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-19
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:08:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27625856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bobbiejelly/pseuds/bobbiejelly
Summary: You call her, because you don't know who else to call; who else would understand this but her, anyway?
Relationships: Meredith Grey/Addison Montgomery
Series: Guess Who's Crushing on Addison Montgomery? [41]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1797412
Comments: 16
Kudos: 27





	The Way It Ends

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Phone](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24620206) by [tornyourdress](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tornyourdress/pseuds/tornyourdress). 
  * Inspired by [You Were the One](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/715132) by meltyoudown. 
  * Inspired by [Grey in LA, But She Likes It That Way](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/715133) by SilverStarsAndMoons. 



_Author's note:_

Cheers to another :).

bobbiejelly

* * *

**The Way It Ends**

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You call her, because you don't know who else to call; who else would understand this but her, anyway?

You call her years past the time you've last seen her. Decades, even, or at least more than one of those.

You call her in the evening, even though you've known since the morning.

Known that the person you thought you'd spend the rest of your life with had been cheating on you.

You think it's your fault, but then again, you always do.

If you had been more focused on him, less selfish, less of a cowboy, then maybe he might have stayed.

It feels like when you were an intern still, back when you were begging him to pick you. Begging him to choose you. Begging him to love you.

And that was before he even called you a whore.

At the end of the day, when you look back, you realize that some of the most romantic moments had been full of deception, much less adultery.

Damn, one of the first things you'd ever said to him was 'you really like yourself, don't you?' and now you realize he's in love with himself more than he was ever in love with her, much less you.

And you even have kids with him.

And you have a post-it with him.

And you have a marriage with him.

_Had a marriage with him._

You always thought somehow you'd have been the one that stuck for him.

But now you realize you might have needed the warning bells sooner.

You saw him fail to choose between you and Addison.

You saw him fail to choose between you and Rose.

And now, you fail to see him choose between you and a perky little woman that you've never met.

You've seen him angry; he nearly ended it with you when you messed up that clinical trial.

You've seen him overconfident; he took all of the credit for the other clinical trial.

You've seen him pass you by for his work time and again.

And yet, you've settled. And what that says about you, you don't really care to know.

You thought you were past 'dark and twisty Meredith,' stage of your life, but as it turns out, you've never ever left it.

At this point, you realize you've hardly dated before him. You met him your first day as an intern, hell, the night before that, and you'd never really had a relationship.

And maybe that's why you didn't realize that yours wasn't wholly healthy.

You drove Cristina crazy for years with your troubles.

It's only now that you wonder if you put her through hell for good reason.

And now she's gone, or at least she's not just next to you like she used to be.

Cristina's in Switzerland now, and you're still in Seattle.

And now you find yourself calling her in Los Angeles.

"Hey," you start, and your voice breaks immediately, and you almost hang up before she has to answer.

"Meredith?" her surprised voice rings into the evening.

"He- he cheated on me," you blurt it out right away because you just can't contain yourself.

"I'm so sorry," her voice breaks also.

"So am I," you say.

"It's not your fault, you know," she says to you, and it's just exactly what you needed to hear, and you cry again into the phone.

"You know…" She begins. "You know, the night he found us, found out about what we did, what went wrong, Mark left of course, but then he kicked me out into the rain. I was begging him to let me back in. And he only did after a while. And then he left, and then I was alone. And that's when it all really should have been over," she offers.

"He had you out in the rain?" You question.

"He did," she says softly.

"He's not here for me to kick out in the rain," you explain. "He's in D.C. He might not even know that I know yet. But I do know. And I'm sure, and I hate that," you say sadly.

"I'm not saying I didn't deserve it. I'm not saying that he does or doesn't now. But I guess I'm saying it's hard, and after it- after the adultery, he said it wasn't going to work anymore. And I wish I'd let go sooner, so that we all could have moved on," she offers.

"I don't think you deserved to be out in the rain though," you sigh. "I don't think I'm going to kick him out in the rain," you say to her.

"Are you going to stay with him though? Take him back?" she says, her voice sounding almost a little bit worried.

"I don't know," you say first. "Okay, I do know. I know I want to leave him. But I know I don't want to kick him into the rain either. It's different now, and I'm not saying it's less hard. But we have kids together, and I don't want them to grow up without their father. Not the way that I did," you say.

"Of course not," she says. "But here I find myself giving you the exact opposite advice that I'd given you the first time I'd come back to Seattle," you can feel that she almost smiles. "This time, rather than asking if you're letting him get away, I'm asking if you're letting your life get away from you, and giving yourself up for him, if this is not what you want anymore."

"It's what I want, even if he isn't," you sigh.

"What is?" she questions.

"Having a family," you say. "I want for my kids to have both parents together, living under one roof, in a relationship. Damnit, I tried to have that, to provide that, but he broke my damn heart tonight, and I'm sorry. I'm sorry for calling you at a time like this. I'm sorry for calling you out of the blue after never having called out basically ever. And I'm sorry you had to meet me as your husband's mistress at the time, who held off for barely half a year before cheating with him, and stealing him from under your fingertips," you nearly screech out.

"It's okay, Meredith. All of that was a long time ago. There's been a lot of water under the bridge since then," she says.

"You know, I never could remember the end of that expression," you smile.

"Yeah, it's a good one sometimes," she says.

"It is."

At this point in the conversation, you know you should probably leave it.

You're crossing the bridges that had been burned long ago, and now you're budding friendships that should probably never be formed.

A part of you is regressing to when she was the wife and you were just the ex-mistress.

And now you're the wife, and he's your husband, and you've been surpassed by yet another dirty mistress.

People, apparently, are nothing more than predictable.

"So this is the way it ends, huh?" she asks you, and you wonder why she feels so sad for you, when you had never been sad enough for her.

"I guess it is," you sigh.

"Good girl," she says, and it sends you back years to the first day you worked with her.

The first time she told you she was proud of you for not taking him back.

At that moment you thought it was for her own benefit.

At this point, you realize that it had been for yours this whole time.

And it guts you.

"You know," she starts again, and you perk up and listen just as you did when she was your teacher. "Your kids will always love you no matter what," she finishes, and at this point you let yourself go and cry out your ugly crying because she's hitting you right in the wringer.

"He doesn't love me anymore," you shriek, and you can hear her telling you 'it's okay,' over and over.

"He probably still loves you," she offers.

"But just not enough," you conclude.

She doesn't argue with that one.

Because you're not wrong.

And you both know that.

You both know that, at this point.

Because you both know him. Knew him.

Love him, loved him. Stayed with him. Married him.

You realize it's a little uncanny all you share with this woman.

This broken and beautiful powerful woman is comforting you from miles away, and you don't know how to thank her, but you say to her "thank you," and it's a start.

She asks you if you want to come over, to stay with her, just for a little while.

She doesn't expect anything from your answer, but you take her up on her offer.

When he calls you next, you're with her, and she's holding you close.

You ask him what happened, and he confesses his sins.

You tell him you're leaving him.

He asks you why.

You laugh.

It's bitter, and you laugh even more because he's so arrogant to think that you'd stay anyway.

You tell him to send you over divorce papers, and that you'll split the custody with your kids.

You don't want to go through a bitter trial, and you're not going to fight for either or.

You don't have the energy to hate him, you just don't anymore.

You just need to get on your feet and have a life again.

You feel the need to start over.

At this point you've made a name for yourself. You have the means to live wherever you want.

And then you realize that what you want is to be just still for a while.

You stay with her as long as she lets you, and when you mention moving out she looks away from you, and you realize that she doesn't want you to go as much as you don't really want to leave her.

Her kid gets along well with yours. You have another on the way, and it's his. But it doesn't matter. They all seem to be _yours_ now, at this point.

They all live together. They all go to school together.

Nine months later when your third and last child is born, people ask you if it's hers with you.

You have to bite your tongue not to say 'yes,'.

She always looks away when you say that it isn't.

Only your oldest kid asks you if you're ever moving back to where you used to live. The others aren't old enough to really remember.

You ask your kids what they want.

They say that they just want what you want.

They just want you to be happy.

And then suddenly, you realize that you already are.

You see the sun every day. You walk on the beach. You're very zen.

You feel like a family, you have all that you need.

And you never feel like the glass is half-empty.

You never thought that you'd ever fall in love again, and maybe she never did either.

After she left her child's father, you comforted her, just as she did you.

He never understood her, and maybe she never really fit with him, either.

They divorced amicably, just as you both did.

And the strangest thing happened; when Jake let her, he asked for you to cherish her in his place.

You said that you would, as her friend, and then he winked at you before he was gone.

You never really knew what he meant by that until she kissed you.

It wasn't something you had been expecting, but it wasn't something you shied away from, either.

She leaned in one evening under her front porch that you now call your own as well.

She tucked your hair behind your ear, and she pressed her lips together.

And you reached up to caress her gentle face, and you shared the moment you'd been building up to for seemingly an eternity.

And nothing changed, hardly. You'd already fit your lives together. You'd already blended your families.

Life went on, life went great.

You loved her; and she loved you.

And when you looked back on it together when you finally got married to each other, you both remembered the moment you reached for your phone and called her.

You both pinpointed that moment as what was 'the one,'.

_The night that led the way to the night it all began._

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***** **FIN**

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_Author's Note:_

Thanks for reading, folks!

###  [bobbiejelly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bobbiejelly/pseuds/bobbiejelly)


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